Who Loses Most if Rabin-Arafat Negotiations Stall?

By Richard H. Curtiss

"A striking theme, from all of the political spectrum, is that there is nothing really new in these dramatic stories. What is new, the commentators write, is that people are choosing to speak them aloud—and the military censor is permitting it."—Jerusalem correspondent Barton Gellman, Washington Post, Aug. 19, 1995.

Whose side is time really on as deadlines for completing the current Israeli-Palestinian interim peace agreement come and go, and gala White House signing ceremonies are scheduled and postponed? This year Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and his American sidekick, U.S. peace talks coordinator Dennis Ross, together seem to be playing the part of comic strip character Lucy, jerking away the football each time Charlie Brown tries to kick it.

When Peres whispers that the Syrians are ready to sign, Ross sends hapless U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher off to Damascus to clinch the deal by kicking the ball through the goalpost. But when Christopher arrives the Syrians express astonishment. How can they sign a deal when each time they offer full peace, the Israelis hedge on their part of the bargain—full withdrawal?

Similarly, each time the Israelis whisper to Ross that the Palestinians are ready to agree to Israeli terms for withdrawing their military occupation forces from the West Bank, President Bill Clinton invites the participants to the White House for the ceremonial handshake. But then Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat points out that Israeli "withdrawal" from the West Bank has eroded into "redeployment" of Israeli forces from only four West Bank towns for certain before scheduled Palestinian elections, and that unsettled details include what kind of Palestinian parliament will be elected, when additional redeployments will take place, and who will be in charge of security, water, finances, and the economy between the interim agreement and conclusion of "final stage negotiations."

The Israelis know they could have real peace with both Yasser Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, and real acceptance by the entire League of Arab States, if they would accept without reservations the U.N. Security Council's "land-for-peace" Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967. It calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent [June 1967] conflict" in return for Arab acknowledgement of Israel's "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

Those boundaries are clearly defined. People who live on the Israeli side have yellow license plates and those who live on the Palestinian side have blue license plates—except for the West Bank Jewish settlers. But Israel refuses to choose between the only two alternatives for dealing with the 130,000 settlers. One is to force them to return to within Israel's borders. The other is to "let Jews live anywhere within the land of Israel," as the settlers insist, but also let the Palestinians live anywhere within the land of Palestine, as diaspora Palestinians insist. But the settlers say they won't withdraw. And the "anyone live anywhere" solution is a recipe for legal chaos, since virtually every Jew both in Israel and in the West Bank resides on land stolen or expropriated from Palestinians who still are living or have living heirs.

Rabin has no intention of dealing with the settlers.

In fact, prior to Israel's 1996 elections, Rabin has no intention of dealing with the settlers, who have become the true "obstacle to peace," as all six U.S. presidents prior to Bill Clinton have said repeatedly. Rabin would rather stonewall Arafat until the Palestinian leader either gives up (in which case he can be blamed for failure of the Oslo accords), or gives in (in which case he will lose the support of his own people, making his signature on any interim agreement not worth the paper on which it is written). Either case would suit Rabin just fine. Meanwhile, his support among Israelis is growing, based on their perception of his tough and shrewd delaying measures while his government creates "facts on the ground" in the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

For Arafat it's a cruel dilemma. He signed an unfair agreement in 1993 because his stand over the Gulf war had alienated the oil-producing Arab countries from which he drew all of his financial support. He was betting that his return to Palestinian soil and world recognition of the reality of Palestinian sovereignty over a part of Palestine would lead inevitably to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

But he was cheated out of even that small piece of sovereignty, and now he is faced with an even crueler choice. To continue receiving international aid, should he sign an agreement that gives him the towns of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm and Qalqilya before elections in November; Ramallah and Bethlehem afterward; no provisions for the major town of Hebron, with its 90,000 Palestinian and 400 Jewish inhabitants; no agreement on the all-important matter of who controls the West Bank's water; and continued Israeli control of the hundreds of West Bank villages upon which the seven Palestinian towns in question depend economically? If he does sign such an agreement, will it unleash new forces for peace? Or will it ensure that the Israelis can squeeze the West Bank towns under his control economically just as mercilessly as they have squeezed Gaza?

No Cards Left?

If they do, will he be so weakened politically that he will have no cards left to play in the all-important final stage negotiations over Jerusalem, borders, Jewish settlers, and Palestinian refugees? Meanwhile, as he agonizes, polls show that just as surely as Rabin is gaining the support of Israelis, Arafat is losing the support of Palestinians.

But, aside from the short run, is time really on the Israeli side in the long run? Not necessarily. If the only way Arafat can get to the elections that will give him legitimacy is to sign an agreement that further undercuts the hopes of his people for an eventual land-for-peace settlement, why sign at all? A refusal to sign is something around which virtually all Palestinians would rally.

If he doesn't sign, Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu might be elected in 1996. Netanyahu vows that he will ignore international law and diplomatic precedent and simply nullify the Declaration of Principles of Peace that the Rabin government signed on the White House lawn only two years ago. Would that really be so bad for the Palestinians? Or would it at least show the world the true nature of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute?

And would time then continue to favor the Israelis? The Clinton administration would like an interim Israeli-Palestinian agreement to help increase its re-election chances—which at present seem extremely poor. But why should the Palestinians help Clinton be re-elected? No past U.S. administration has been more pro-Israeli. No future administration can surpass it, since Clinton and Christopher have simply turned over U.S. Middle East policy to the Rabin government.

Meanwhile, in the world at large, and even in the United States, people increasingly are seeing the Middle Eastern realities. For starters, despite Golda Meir's dictim that "Palestinians don't exist," Americans have met Palestinians. They realize people like Dr. Haider Abdel Shafi and Hanan Ashrawi belong in the councils of nations, not beyond the pale.

At the same time, long-suppressed truths about Zionism, the birth of Israel, the origins of its wars, and the unspeakable callousness and cruelty that have accompanied all of these events are seeping into the public consciousness. For years anyone could have read in the diaries of Moshe Sharett, Israel's second prime minister, a first-hand account of the killing of shepherd boys by some of Ariel Sharon's "Unit 101" soldiers on a "retaliatory" raid into the West Bank, when it still was under Jordanian administration. All of the children were tortured to death except one, who was "released to go back and tell their parents how they died."

Israelis (and all of the Arabs) have known these things for years, yet the macho image of Sharon's merciless paratroopers provided the role models for the next two generations of Israeli young men, including those who today form the ubiquitous Israeli death squads still roaming the West Bank and Gaza. Now, however, thanks to Israel's "new historians," authenticated accounts of prisoner executions and "ethnic cleansing" by Israelis are appearing in the Israeli press—and finding their way into European and American journals as well.

On Aug. 17, for example, following a rash of Israeli press reports of executions of hundreds of Egyptian prisoners in the 1956 and 1967 wars, Israelis could read a first-person account of just one of the smaller of such incidents by writer Gabi Brun of Yediot Ahronot, Israel's largest-circulation daily. He watched as Israeli troops seized five Egyptian soldiers in the town of Al Arish, only a few miles from the Israeli border, where they could have been interned. Instead, one of the five was forced to dig a grave and then lie down in it, where he was shot. Each of the other prisoners, in turn, was forced to lie down and be shot in the same grave, which then was filled in.

Washington Post readers who looked very hard could find the same account on page 18 of the Aug. 19 edition. They could also learn from a report by Post Jerusalem correspondent Barton Gellman that comment in Israel about the revelations focuses not on the truth of the accounts, which are related by some of their best-known military heroes, but on the unprecedented leniency of Israeli censors in letting them be published.

Wrote Amos Carmel in Yediot Ahronot, "Where did their common sense vanish?" Did they "not think, for example, of what the Egyptians would say?" Remarked Sharon, one of whose brigade commanders admitted executing thirsty Egyptian prisoners after first tormenting them by emptying a canteen of water into the sand before their eyes, "Israel doesn't need this and no one can preach to us about it—no one."

But people can, and will. Except for one unverified Israeli charge that Syrians killed a group of Israelis taken prisoner in the Golan Heights in 1973, there have never been charges of Arab executions of Israeli prisoners. And, instead of trying those who committed such crimes, as the U.S. did in the case of the My Lai massacre, the Israelis have made some of them (Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir) prime ministers. As Americans and others finally realize how bad the Israeli record really is, it is bound to have an effect on diplomatic support for Israeli policies that are undermining Middle East peace.

It certainly will not help the case for aid to Israel, which already is in jeopardy. If members of Congress in either party are serious about balancing the U.S. budget, the ridiculous levels of both overt and hidden financial support for Israel can only fall. Further, the unwillingness of Israel to make peace with the Palestinians will undo all of the acceptance it has achieved among its Arab neighbors.

This reversal will be accelerated if the fall of Saddam Hussain in Iraq, the installation of a more pragmatic and less ideological government in Iran, or both, returns some measure of stability to the Gulf, enabling the oil-producing Arabs again to unite around support for the Palestinians, if they still need it.

In contemplating his course of action, Yasser Arafat is aware that an even worse choice than abandoning a flawed policy is persisting in trying to make it work. And how much worse than being the former leader of a national liberation movement would it be to be the incumbent leader of a collaborationist government—a Quisling?

If he continues to negotiate, firmly but reasonably, there still is one trump card remaining in his hand. If the Israelis do not budge, and the Clinton administration does not force Rabin to compromise, Yasser Arafat can resign. Then, as the world learns why, the element of time which now seems to favor Israel may, inexorably, change sides.